Hubert Butler; Edited by John Banville

'The breadth of Butler's interests and concerns is remarkable, even
for a writer whose career spanned the greater part of a tumultuous
century ...whether he is writing about wartime atrocities or local
history, the slaughter of the Jews or Celtic hagiography, he speaks
with authenticity. In this he is a member of a dying species.' John
Banville 'Like Milosz from Poland or Holub from Czechoslovakia,
Butler is a true cosmopolitan, and his writing has something of
their unruffled astringency and meditative humour.' John Bayley 'An
odyssey, from Ireland to East, West and back again: stemming from
and returning to an intellectual tradition which takes in Montaigne
and Turgenev as well as Swift and Shaw - It moves like a
searchlight, to take in and illuminate the largest questions
imaginable.' R.F. Foster 'To follow Hubert Butler is to enjoy the
hair-raising frisson of history passing by.' Eoghan Harris